


night's falling, so take courage (you're not alone)

by gumbridge



Category: Hellboy (comic)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-23
Updated: 2011-09-23
Packaged: 2017-10-23 23:32:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/256311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gumbridge/pseuds/gumbridge
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abe Sapien and Hellboy have a chat. Post-<i>Hellboy: The Fury #3/BPRD: Hell on Earth: Monsters #2</i>, with major, major spoilers for both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	night's falling, so take courage (you're not alone)

Abe Sapien doesn't know where he is. He remembers, with a vagueness that should disturb him, the mission in Texas: arguing with Kate and Devon; finding the girl Fenix; getting shot. Bits and pieces of the ride in the ambulance, all scattered, out of focus and order. He's no recollection of leaving the ambulance, of getting here.

Wherever _here_ is.

When he thinks to look around, there's nothing to be seen; a flat, dark blandness, nothing special to draw the eye, nothing particular he'd remember from elsewhere, the abandoned school or B.P.R.D. headquarters.

Abe wonders, vaguely, if he's dead. Dead or, perhaps, back in the tank. He wasn't awake for any moment for his first long stay, entirely unaware of the passage of time, the changes in his body. He doesn't know which option is preferable.

He hangs there, or stands, or sits (he is not sure which), for a long time. No clocks, no light, no _heartbeat_ to count (is that a tick in the column for 'dead', or for 'hibernating'?). At long last, though, something appears in his vision: a red spark of something, a flickering patch of light in the corner of his left eye. Abe sees excellently in the dark, good as any deep-sea creature at navigating in dim conditions, and he heads towards it unerringly.

Abe nears the bright whatever-it-is; he can make out a little more detail, from this distance. A red lump on the bottom, flickering orange on top -- fire? He hadn't thought that fire could exist here (wherever _here_ is).

A little nearer, a little nearer, and the thing blinks into focus: it's a heart, huge and red and still, burning without being consumed. A burning bush, and does that make Abe Moses? This void doesn't seem the right place for a sign from any God.

A line of Poe slides its way into Abe's mind, sure and slick as an eel after its dinner: _prophet, said I, thing of evil; prophet still, if bird or devil_. A lifetime spent chasing monsters has drilled into Abe to trust his instincts. And right now, his every nerve is shouting that this burning heart is important, that he mustn't let it slide away. It's sinking, getting closer and closer to whatever passes for a floor here, and something about its jerky unwilling movement makes Abe think it might be getting pulled more than going on its own steam.

"You shouldn't treat another person's heart that way," he murmurs, before he entirely realizes what he's saying. It's the first noise he's heard since he got here, wherever this is, whenever he arrived, and it startles him, goads him into motion. Abe flows forward, slicing through distance as though it's clear water and he's trying to beat his personal best time.

The tips of his fingers (blue-green and slick as a salmon's back) touch the heart, cool as stone under the flames, and it-- it pulls him closer, forward, down. Abe thinks, for a moment that might be as long as a heartbeat, if he could remember how long a heartbeat was, that it's going to pull him into the ground, pull him along like a comet's tail to wherever it's going, before it yanks him in.

It's red inside, red and enormous and cracked, like hard-baked soil during a drought, like the fissures and bubbles in old paint on orange-rusted iron, like Hellboy's right arm.

Hellboy, whom Abe hasn't seen in more years than he likes to count; Hellboy, who is.... lying on the dry cracked-marble floor, a huddle of red skin and tan overcoat, tail curled, limp, at his side.

Abe starts forward and Hellboy groans, a noise like he's dying.

Abe Sapien sinks down next to Hellboy, touches him, light as the brush of fin against scale. He doesn't feel a pulse, thinks of the burning heart, of whose it might be (have been).

Hellboy sits up, a slow and painful-looking process; Abe keeps out of his way. Hellboy's covered in scrapes and bruises, more cuts and tears ripping through red skin and flesh than Abe's ever seen before after any mission. His torso looks oddly concave, stepped-on more than anything else, and scorched after that. And there's blood, red blood everywhere, dark and shining against the dryness of the rest of him.

"Friend," says Abe, hushed, "How did you survive all this?"

Hellboy coughs, rattling deep in his chest, and spares a pained grimace upwards. "The long and short of it? Didn't. You're a clever guy, Abe, though you'd've guessed that by now."

"I suppose I had hoped otherwise," Abe says, quiet, rueful. He lets one hand rest on Hellboy's shoulder, the least abused patch of skin he can find. "Tell me at least it was worth it?"

"No idea." Hellboy looks grim, more emotion than Abe can make himself feel right now. "I took her out -- the dragon-witch -- long story, Abe -- but I've got a feeling there's more to it than her. She dragged me down with her; I'm going to Hell, Abe. She thought that was worth her death. She's not the biggest bad in the picture, and I'm scared down to my toes of what power she could be bowing to."

"Fate. The inevitable," says Abe, dreamy. His second eyelids, the clear ones, slick shut. "The Ogdru-Jahad. Oannes, god of the unknowable depths. The apocalypse of fire and flood, and what comes after."

"Abe?" Hellboy says, startled, worried. And: "No. _Caul_. Langdon Everett Caul, you've been dead longer than you ever were alive. You don't have any rights to Abe Sapien's body any more."

"Trying to exorcise me, Apocalypse beast?" Caul asks, in Abe's voice, with Abe's mannerisms: the tilt of his head, the scroll of his lips. He scrapes a foot against the sandpaper ground and the rasp of it fills the hot, still air.

"One last job, favour for an old friend. You know how it goes." Hellboy grunts, and slips a hand into a pocket: the left hand, the flesh hand. It hurts more than almost anything he's felt before, but he manages to close his fingers around a vial of holy water, still intact. There's a church, somewhere in the north of Romania, with a freshwater spring bubbling up in its courtyard: source of its holy water. Just about the purest Hellboy's managed to find that isn't direct from the Vatican.

Hellboy digs a nail into the wax seal, feels it crumble, and lobs the vial overhand at Caul. Caul doesn't even try to dodge, and the vial beans him right in the forehead, between the two black streaks that rise from his ( _Abe's_ ) eyebrows. The vial falls to shatter on the floor, and the water splashes, drips down into Caul's eyes.

Caul blinks, wipes it away: nothing Hellboy's ever seen Abe do. Caul's not used to the fishman-body and the way it deals with liquids. "Was that meant to accomplish anything?" he inquires, voice a shark's tooth, serrated and mean.

Hellboy grins, fierce in victory. He _aches_ , sharp and stabbing wherever it's not the blunt hammering of bruised flesh, and knows there's only worse to come. He leans back and stares up at the ceiling, arching cathedral-high and cracked with age.

"We're going down to Hell, Langdon; Nimue's making sure of that. But she's not gunning for you or Abe in particular, and Hell won't take anything covered in water that holy without a damn good reason. Abe's goin' right back up, back to the living if he tries hard enough, and there's no way your spirit stayed strong enough these past two centuries to survive way up in the light of day, away from the spaces between. You're done, Caul. That's all for you."

Caul might be making a reply, but Hellboy's vision is going dark round the edges, black a welcome contrast to the red, red, red of this heart-cathedral. Too much exertion, too much fighting. Too much _everything_. He'd be glad for a rest between now and Hell.

"You were a good friend, Abe," Hellboy murmurs. " _Damn_ good friend. More than you knew."

There's a dull sound near Hellboy, a thump. He rolls his single remaining eye to the side and sees Abe kneeling there, the brightness back in his flat blue eyes.

"You realize I've been shot point-blank four times, right?" Abe asks, worry thick in his voice.

"Survived worse," Hellboy manages, throat dry, rasping. "You'll do fine."

"Good luck, Hellboy," says Abe, and that's the last thing Hellboy hears for a while.

Hanging in his tank, Abe gasps; plumes of bubbles pour from his gills, and his lungs expand deeply for the first time in hours.

Complicated machines scream Abe's survival, and in her office, Kate jumps up from her desk, eyes wide.


End file.
